The study of race/ethnicity and leisure has been an area of great interest to
researchers since at least the 1970s. Numerous studies have shown that differences exist
in the ways people from different racial/ethnic groups participate in outdoor recreation.
Most of these studies have found that racial and ethnic minorities (i.e. non-White
groups) participate in many outdoor recreation activities at proportionally lower levels
than do Whites. While these studies present numerous hypotheses to help explain this
phenomenon, no study has been conclusive.
In this dissertation, I present a theoretical framework and three empirical studies
to investigate the nuances of this issue. The first study examines the theory of systemic
racism (Feagin, 2006) and its utility to deepen our understanding of the factors that play
into African Americans relationship with nature and outdoor recreation. The second
study analyzes narrative and historical autobiographical accounts of African Americans
from the three major racial eras in United States history in order to examine African
Americans’ relationship with nature over time. The third study examines the racially
related constraints of African Americans who are involved in serious leisure pursuits of activities generally considered outdoor recreation, as well as African Americans who are
involved in nature related careers. The constraints I found with this group are
reservations of family and friends regarding being in “the woods,” collective memory
and fear, being the “only one, ” discrimination and “reverse curiosity,” assumption of
novice status, and balancing identity between being Black, and “acting White.”
In the fourth study I analyze this same study group, but explore their
experiences of being involved in serious leisure and look at the negotiation schema that
this group employed to sustain participation. These negotiation schema are childhood
formative experiences, realizing deep connections to nature, transcendental experiences
in nature, leaning on knowledge of nature, comfort with White people/places/groups,
and positive experiences with White people in nature. The four studies in this collection
represent a rethinking and deepening of our knowledge of African American
participation in the outdoors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-3062 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Cavin, Drew Alan |
| Contributors | Scott, David |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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